Hendons Bulldog

Melvin

Are you referring to the various exquisite WW1 reproductions or do you have other aircraft in mind, and if so which ones?

Veltro

Some of the restorations done for and by the RAF Museum over the years have not been “conservation” jobs rather than rebuilds. Not a lot of the DH9a is left from what came over from Poland, I was once told the interplane struts on the Sopwith triplane are made of scaffold boards and that much of the wood was discarded. Some of these things were done before the museum was started, back in the 1960s when no one worried about such things, but the old system at Cardington was to replace rather than repair. This led to a lot of original stuff being left out. I donn’t know whether this has changed now but there is about as much original material in some of the ‘original’ WW1 aeroplanes as there is in the Bulldog!

Perhaps someone can get a close-up of the panel when they next visit.

Unless they’ve had the foresight to get one already 🙂

Cheers Veltro

Geoff

Bulldogs and originals

Melvin

Are you referring to the various exquisite WW1 reproductions or do you have other aircraft in mind, and if so which ones?

Veltro

I was at Farnborough on the day it crashed. We were just arriving when ….whhooomph! It piled in close to the barrier. Wonderful to see it rebuilt to such a fantastic standard. From the drawing, about 1/3 appears to be orginal.

Rather more than some of the other aircraft there!

I was at Farnborough on the day it crashed. We were just arriving when ….whhooomph! It piled in close to the barrier. Wonderful to see it rebuilt to such a fantastic standard. From the drawing, about 1/3 appears to be orginal.

Bulldog

In my opinion, the Bulldog restoration is a model of what national museums should do to preserve and enhance the aviation heritage.

The attached photo shows the provenance of the material by colour code:

– Red: original from crashed G-ABBB
– Green: original spare lower wing
– Blue: original period accessories
– Yellow: other original parts

and of course, implied but not stated, everything else is due to Skysport’s restorative magic.

Veltro

This is a photo I took last weekend. I believe the display panel circled shows what is original & what isn’t.

Perhaps someone can get a close-up of the panel when they next visit.

Geoff.

It was rebuilt by Skysport Engineering on behalf of the RAFM. I would say from memory that about 75% of it is the original machine with parts repaired
rather than replaced . Sadly post the crash very little effort was given to keeping it all in one place and a large number of parts went astray.

Nice photo’s.Here’ what it looked like just before it’s last flight at Farnborough 13/9/64 :mad:, taken by my dad . Glad the RAFM rebuilt it in the end, wonder how much of it is original though?

Nice group of pics Alex. It’s nice to see some detailed shots here. 😎

J.V.